Monday, November 12, 2012

The Board of Supreme Audit, Part III Of Washington And Baghdad’s Failed Attempt To Fight Corruption

Corruption was endemic under Saddam Hussein. During the
sanctions period, the government manipulated the Oil for Food Program for
instance, and used petroleum smuggling to earn extra cash. Saddam’s extended
family and the top leadership within the Baath Party benefited from this
system. Corruption continued, and even expanded after 2003 as billions in
reconstruction money and oil profits flowed into Iraq with little oversight and
management. That opened up opportunities for abuse by the ruling elite. They have
divided up the country’s wealth, and created new institutionalized forms of
corruption as government contracts are manipulated to enrich the parties. The
Board of Supreme Audit, the oldest anti-corruption agency within the country, has
seen all of this. During the Saddam era it was emaciated, and then under the
Americans it was hampered by a new and complicated set of bureaucrat rules.
Today, it suffers from infighting with the other anti-graft groups, and
attempts to dominate Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to control it, which has
greatly limited its effectiveness.

The Board of Supreme Audit (BSA) has existed for over eight
decades. The British created the agency in 1927, to go through the
government’s accounts. In 1980, it was given additional power to look into
Baghdad’s financial and economic policies. Still, the Board didn’t have any
real authority under Saddam Hussein, as it only dealt with corruption when it
threatened him or the Baath Party. When the Coalition Provisional Authority
(CPA) was created in April 2003, it temporarily abolished the BSA as part of a
sweeping order getting rid of Baathist institutions. The head of the Board Dr.
Ihsan Ghanim al-Ghazi went to the CPA, to explain to them his duties, and
successfully got the Board reinstated in September with CPA Order 57. Unfortunately, the next year, Dr. Ghazi was assassinated in a car bombing in Baghdad. Abdul Bassit Turki replaced him. Their organization was
understaffed and lacked equipment. Out of its 1,200 employees, only 100-150
were actual auditors, and it only had five computers. The U.S. didn’t give it
much support either, other than some training. Although the Board had such a
storied history, before and after the fall of Saddam, it was not that
effective. Its teeth had been pulled by the Baath regime, and it had no time to
recover after the U.S. disbanded it, and then brought it back. That was
unfortunate, because its oversight duties were needed after 2003 as huge sums
of money started flowing into the country.

In April 2004, the CPA attempted to integrate the Board of
Supreme Audit within a new anti-corruption framework, but the Coalition ended
up hamstringing the Board’s work more than facilitating it. The Coalition tired
to make the BSA subservient to the U.S. created Inspector Generals (IG) within
the ministries and the Integrity Commission. Taking away the Board’s power to
send cases directly to the courts did that. Instead, it had to go through the
IGs’ and Integrity Commission. The Board greatly resented these new agencies
and rules created by the Americans. It felt, as the oldest anti-corruption body
in Iraq that it should be equal to or above the inspectors and Integrity
Commission. As a result of its hurt pride, it often did not cooperate with them
or share information hampering investigations against theft and graft.

At the same time, the Board only had a limited affect upon
the wave of corruption that took hold after the 2003 fall of Saddam. One of its
largest cases, an investigation of the Defense Ministry under the interim government of Premier Iyad Allawi for example, led nowhere. The BSA found
that the Ministry had wasted $1.27 billion on military purchases through kickbacks, middlemen, and useless equipment. This happened just in the
first eight months after Iraq got its sovereignty back in June 2004. The
Ministry claimed that it was buying equipment from Poland, the U.S., Europe, and
Arab countries when in fact it gave contracts to Iraqi companies who were paid
up front in cash. Some companies went ahead and actually bought equipment, but
most of it was unusable such as a fleet of leaking Armored Personnel Carriers.
Another case involved the purchase of 64 Mi-18 attack helicopters from Poland and Russia, which turned out to be just four that were 25 years old. Other
middlemen just walked away with the cash, never to be heard from again. One
company was partly owned by the Defense Minister Hazim Shalan’s brother-in-law
and an adviser to one of the vice presidents. As a result of this investigation,
only nine Defense Ministry officials were fired or placed on leave. Minister Shalan later left the country in 2005, and no real punishments were ever
meted out. Here, the Iraqis were emerging from decades of dictatorship, and the
first thing they decided to do was take off with over one billion dollars of
public money. The Board of Supreme Audit was able to discover this massive
theft, but because it garnered no domestic support the case went nowhere. This
showed to the new Iraqi officials they could do what they wanted with no real
repercussions.

Violence also played a role in limiting the effectives of
the Board. From 2005-2008 several workers at the BSA were killed. Some were
specifically targeted for assassination. One official had a grenade thrown into
his car right after he finished doing some work at a ministry. The headquarters
of the Board was also often off limits as there were constant gun battles and
sniper fire outside on the street. For weeks, workers couldn’t go to their
offices as a result, and the Board essentially shut down its work.

The new Iraqi government was not supportive of the BSA doing
its work either. Authorities actively attempted to limit its investigations.
They went after the Board’s independence and interfered in cases. In 2007,
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told U.S. officials that he was against agencies
like the Board investigating corruption. This was true for the other two
anti-corruption agencies as well. Because nepotism, bribery, and theft were so
rampant within Baghdad, Maliki did not want anyone looking into the
government’s books, and causing problems. The premier therefore did anything he
could to block the work of the Board.

The premier also tried to manipulate the Board to further
his own political aims. In 2012, charges were brought against the head of the Election Commission Faraj al-Haydari for giving $130 to members of the State Property Commission in return for obtaining government land. A Board
official said that it had known about corruption in the Commission for years,
but not one ever acted upon it. He thought the case was being used by Maliki to
gain control over the independent agency. He claimed that Maliki was angry with
the Election Commission after his State of Law list came in second place in the
2010 elections. The Board member was not alone in his suspicions, as the case
was later dropped, and Haydari found innocent. The charges and amount of money
involved seemed minor at best. The fact that it involved the head of the
Election Commission a year before provincial elections also raised eyebrows.
Given the fact that it also came as the premier attempted to increase the
number of Commission members all pointed to Maliki using all means at his
disposal to gain sway over the up coming vote. The Board of Supreme Audit
simply became a pawn in this game.

In the last 20 years, the Board of Supreme Audit has had a
difficult history. First, during the 1990s, it lost much of its authority as
Saddam Hussein concentrated power in his hands, his family’s, and that of the
upper echelons of the Baath Party. Then when the U.S. came along it didn’t help
by setting up new regulations that limited its abilities. As a result, the
Board was not able to carry out its duties as corruption not only expanded, but
also reached new heights after the fall of the old regime. Today the Board’s
work is limited by the political situation. It can find as many cases of
corruption as it wants, but nothing will happen with them unless they involve
low-level officials or a high level official wants something to happen. The
same is true for the other anti-graft agencies. That’s why Iraq consistently
ranks as one of the most corrupt countries in the world for the last several
years, because there are no real checks and balances within the government.

SOURCES

Adhoob, Salam, “An Inside View of the ‘Second Insurgency’:
How Corruption and Waste Are Undermining the U.S. Mission in Iraq,” Senate
Democratic Policy Committee Hearing, 9/22/08

IRAQ HISTORY TIMELINE

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. I have written for the Jamestown Foundation, Tom Ricks’ Best Defense at Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast, and was responsible for a chapter in the book Volatile Landscape: Iraq And Its Insurgent Movements. My work has been published in Iraq via NRT, AK News, Al-Mada, Sotaliraq, All Iraq News, and Ur News all in Iraq. I was interviewed on BBC Radio 5, Radio Sputnik, CCTV and TRT World News TV, and have appeared in CNN, the Christian Science Monitor, The National, Columbia Journalism Review, Mother Jones, PBS’ Frontline, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Institute for the Study of War, Radio Free Iraq, Rudaw, and others. I have also been cited in Iraq From war To A New Authoritarianism by Toby Dodge, Imagining the Nation Nationalism, Sectarianism and Socio-Political Conflict in Iraq by Harith al-Qarawee, ISIS Inside the Army of Terror by Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassahn, The Rise of the Islamic State by Patrick Cocburn, and others. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com